Organic Vs. Paid: Social Media Marketing for Local Business

Local businesses often struggle to leverage the social media platforms to utilise and reach their potential. One main reason behind this is the confusion between organic and paid social media marketing. And the answer to that depends on the brand goals. 

This blog will guide you on the pros and cons of both organic and paid social media marketing for local businesses. In the end, you’ll be able to choose what’s the right way for you.

Organic Social Media Marketing

Social platforms like Instagram and Facebook allow profiles to post text, images and videos that can be shared with the community without paying for their promotion. 

The pros of it include cost effectiveness, customer interaction, and brand building. Organic social media allows you to reach your audience, build relationships, create a loyal community, know your customers and give your brand the personality it needs. 

While on the other hand, it has its own cons such as limited reach, algorithm dependency and time taking process. Organic social media depends majorly on instagram algorithm, will it favour you reach or not is uncertain. And it is a time consuming process to create engaging content that attracts the audience, stands out from the crowd, effectively delivers your message and in some cases is according to the ongoing trends.

Paid Social Media Marketing

 Paid social media marketing is an extended version of organic marketing where you pay Meta to showcase your message to a wider audience. 

The pros of such SMM is that it helps you reach your target audience and helps you find the right customer. You can select between demographics, interests and behaviours. This will increase your visibility, brand awareness and will share measurable results which will help you track and optimise results. 

Paid marketing is a costly affair, and it is the biggest con of it for local/small businesses with limited funds.While digital marketing services offer a range of strategies, other disadvantages of paid marketing depend on audience preferences and constantly changing algorithms.

What’s Best For You?

 Here are some factors to consider while making your choice:

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   1. • Define your goal: know what you are trying to achieve through SMM. is it building brand awareness, driving traffic, generating leads or increasing sales?
   
   
   • • Specify budget: how much are you willing to spend on marketing? Will you be able to do so consistently?
   
   
   • • Target audience: know your audience and the platform they’re on. 
   
   
   • Results: in what timeframe do you wish to achieve results? Are you looking for immediate results or not? 

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2. To give you clarity over the perspective of organic and paid social media marketing, the best approach is the combination of both. Understanding it in this way, you can leverage organic social media to build brand presence and establish a community while simultaneously taking advantage of paid marketing to target specific audiences and achieve immediate results. 
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How Can A Digital Marketing Agency Help You?

 This blog has taught you the pros and cons of both organic and paid social media marketing. But are you confident enough to devour the time organic marketing needs or know the technical know-how behind paid marketing? If not, a digital marketing agency can be your rescue. Here’s why: 

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   1. • Cost effective: they are cost effective when compared to having an inhouse marketing team. Because hiring the people with the same expertise as that of an agency team will cost a lot. 
   
   
   • • Expertise: they have expertise on handling various industries, creating content, account management and paid marketing. 
   
   
   • Data driven: an experienced digital marketing agency depends on data and understands the major KPIs and metrics that will help you to tailor your approach at the right time saving you money on non performing campaigns.